Staying Calm: Mindfulness And Meditation

Keep Calm, Stay Mindful

How Mindfulness can help you:

Mindfulness stems from mediation and its roots go way back in the Buddhist tradition and practice. The idea is to be aware of your thought process, emotions and anger. We, as steeminians, are in the process of communication all day long. We stare at our screen and disconnect from the world and straight into this different world. Mindfulness can help you stay calm and making good decisions in the moment. Invest correctly and smartly and communicate respectfully and without any regret.

Buddhist Monk Meditating: You Can Benefit From This Too

A little background into myself

and why I can talk about this subject with some knowledge. I am no expert or professional but believe I have a decent grasp of this subject. I have been practicing Buddhism, Mindfulness and other tactics related to these for over 10 years. I have run multiple courses and groups to help people who were in the most need of this. I stay connected with a few friends who are Buddhist monks, Buddhist teachers and activists and just great mentors. I make it very clear that I am still learning and probably will never reach a state of perfection or enlightenment. But I will always strive for it.

Let me explain the benefits that practicing this can help you as it has me. I used to have a lot of anxiety. I would get claustrophobic and get so stressed out that I couldn’t do everyday tasks. I wasn’t able to function often. This effected everything. Even if you don’t have an extreme issue like this, just imagine if the little stress and anxiety you have could be controlled. Just imagine that you could think every you do with the full potential of your mind, skill, knowledge and power.

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it….But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Buddha quotes (Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.)

You should try and experience things yourself before judging it. This goes for both disagreeing and agreeing in nature. If you think something will work or maybe you don’t think it will, try it for yourself to make sure you are correct and see if you can prove your hypothesis on the specific issue.

So the concept of mindfulness is a type of meditation in a way. It is the ability to control your thoughts, emotions and reactions. This could be anger, stress, rash decision making or anything else we do with delusional thoughts. I still make mistakes, don’t get me wrong, but I have grown to a place that I can say I have a lot of control over my thoughts at any given time. This is an amazing concept.

Mindfulness is keeping a moment-by-moment awareness of how we process our thoughts, emotions, feelings and sensations from our surroundings and interactions.

Mindfulness is good for:

Our minds and how we think:

Positive thoughts and emotions are greatly increased while the negative thought process is stopped.

Our Bodies:

It is possible to increase our immune function from mindfulness and mediation.

Compassion:

Helps us understand the suffering of others (very important in Buddhism) and also helps us understand why helping others is important.

Relationships:

Researchers have discovered that these techniques greatly help couples in their relationships. It allows each person to feel more optimistic about the relationship and also be more relaxed and reduce tension.

People In Need:

This practice helps people who are at the lowest of their lives, suffering traumatic changes in their lives and also people who just need the clearness of mind to grow. Including Veterans, incarcerated people, new parents and really anyone who wants to grow.

Since it is a very deep subject as far as teachings go, I am just going to give a simple idea of how to start in my opinion and give some links to more in-depth resources.

How:

The idea is to be aware of how you think. What you react to. What your emotions are based on an incoming sensation. You can start meditating and focusing on your breathing or you can try to start focusing on your thoughts. Mindfulness is a type of mediation so you can approach it however you choose. I suggest just really being aware of everything you do/think and why. Study this for the next few days. See if you can break down the process. The goal would be to catch yourself anytime you experience emotion. That is going to be the first step or goal. Once you start catching yourself in this process then you can work on it. You will want to sculpt your reaction to what will benefit you in the long run.
There are many different types of mediation and I plan on discussing these in later posts.

Here are a couple links to Mindfulness Trainings:

10 Awesome Mindfulness Tips for Beginners
11 Easy Ways You Can Fit Mindfulness into Your Busy Life

I hope to make a series on this. I really hope you enjoyed it. Consider trying it.

I will never use plagiarism or just copy & paste without quoting the source. Please put your support into Original Content and not the posts of people copying & pasting articles without any effort involved.
I really care about everyone here and wish everyone the best of luck. Hopefully this will help at least one person. If so then I am successful in my efforts.